ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses frailty and multimorbidity as key concepts in primary care (PC) clinical practice and research with a main focus on frailty, its multiple components, tools for its assessment and monitoring, and its effective management. Frailty and its associated multimorbidity call for integrated care services that offer a suitable clinical setting to deliver effective, well organized, coordinated, and comprehensive primary health care. Pre-frailty and early stages of frailty are potentially reversible, but it depends on the underlying causes and the associated multimorbidity. The role of the PC team in supporting frailty and multimorbidity is widely recognized. There is an active discussion in the literature about the multiple components of frailty: cognitive, mental, physical, and nutritional. The use of clinical entities like frailty to guide the design and refinement of new educational curricula incorporating integrated, patient-centered, and compassionate care may also facilitate the understanding of necessary actions towards change, and health care reform.
